18.5.04

Rastafarians came to dominate the scene by the mid-1970s with their "rebel music". Rebel singers such as Max Romeo, the anguished Junio Byles, and Winston 'Niney' Holness, forcefully imbued their recordings with traditional Rasta chants. Instrumental to their success was the influence of radical producer Lee 'Scratch' Perry, who tinged their music with a slow, edgy mood of 'dread,' a foreboding style suggestive of impending violence that resonated among the island populace.